Those Are Some Big Boots You're Trying to Fill Son
by My3scape
Summary: Sam had always wanted to grow up to be like his Dad. Turn's out he didn't need to wait that long. Gen, deals with Tarsus colony and chronic illness in passing.


Author's Notes:

*This is a STXI Kink Meme Comment Fic, you can find the prompt here at .com/st_xi_kink_?thread=11843771#t11843771

*Let me stress the FAN in FANfiction and FANon and FANdom please. I know next to nothing about Sam Kirk. Also, I'm moving the year the fungus attacked the crops on Tarsus IV from 2246 to 2247, it works better with me making Sam 4 yrs older than Jim.

*So, I read a lot of Tarsus IV fic, and I'm a Type 1 diabetic myself. So I used my readings and my knowledge of diabetes to write this. It wasn't originally going to deal with Tarsus, I just meant to write about Sam being diagnosed as a diabetic, but well, it took over. I hope the OP likes this fill.

*While I like to think that the study I'm participating in, and other like it and me, will lead to a cure for diabetes in the near future, let alone by the 23rd Century, I'm not overly hopeful. I'm assuming in this fic that Insulin pumps are replaced by insulin 'pods' that are based on the Omni-pod insulin pump.

*I'm not Roddenberry or his associated Powers that Be, they can have these character's I'm borrowing for my own entertainment back in just a moment.

* * *

When Sam was really little he'd looked up to his Dad and even after meeting his little brother and devastated mother in January 2233 he still wanted to grow up to be just like Dad. He quickly determined that year that his mom was next to useless without Dad and so he started out trying to be Dad by learning how to take care of Jim from Grandpa Tiberius. "'Cause a good officer knows how to do a little bit of everything, you never know when that knowledge will save your life or the lives of your crewmates. Even a Vulcan would say it was logical son."

When Jim was five Winona, she'd long since stopped being Mom in Sam's head, had been off-world for a year. And Sam and Jim were left in the care of Frank, not Grandpa Tiberius who actually liked them and answered their questions. So still working to fill his father's boots and become the best future applicant to Starfleet Academy he could be, Sam invented a game to play with Jim. They couldn't explore space very well from Riverside, but they could learn all about their local flora and fauna and all the transplanted types from other places on the planet and off-world. They quickly determined that Jim was Captain in their game and Sam was alternately the Chief Science Officer and the Chief Medical Officer. He even planned out a regimen that would have them knowing all about the different types of life on Earth and all the xenobiological matter currently known and released to the public by the time Jim entered middle school. he only hoped that Jim wasn't allergic to all of it.

In high school Sam started getting involved in a lot of sports, he needed to be fit to be a Starfleet Officer like his Dad. But his favorite sport was swimming, he loved the feel of the water rushing by and the challenge of hypoxic sets. He figured being used to moving in a high density environment and being able to hold his breath or breathe at specific intervals could only serve him well in space and on alien worlds. He also began making plans to take care of Jim after he entered the Academy. Really, he couldn't leave Jim alone with their stepfather. Sam was the only thing keeping Jim safe from Frank's alcoholic abuse, both verbal and physical.

In late 2246 Sam, standing in his cadet reds, watched Jim board a shuttle to the USS Taurus which would take him to the colony planet of Tarsus IV. Jim was smart, and he'd been able to skip a grade so the 9-12 boarding school there was perfect for him and would keep him safe. Then Sam turned and walked onto the shuttle that would take him to the Academy for his first year. Neither knew the atrocities that would occur in their lives that next year.

In January 2247, Earth Time, Sam began to care less about completing his school work and to crave anything sweet and wet as well as be constantly hungry. At the same time, light-years away the Jim was just noticing the first instances of a fungus not unlike the potato blight of 19th century Ireland on the crops his boarding school maintained to feed the student population. Jim brought it to the attention of his biology and history teachers, but they told him to "Never mind your head about that, Governor Kodos and Starfleet have everything well in hand. Nothing will go wrong, there is no chance of there being a famine here. It's a harmless fungus." Jim knew better, but he couldn't get anyone to listen, so he shut up about it.

Easter Sunday, March 28, 2247, Earth Time: Someone finally noticed that Sam wasn't well and dragged him into Starfleet Medical for testing. It turned out that the reason he couldn't stop drinking water or eating, the reason he didn't care about anything anymore, the reason he'd needed to get glasses during the fall semester, the reason he was always tired and irritable, the entire reason he wasn't himself and hadn't been since fucking January at the least, was due to an old disease. Sam was now, officially a Type 1 diabetic and no longer eligible for military service. Starfleet was a military organization, and they couldn't always guarantee a steady supply of insulin, test strips, and other assorted diabetic supplies to their ships and bases. They couldn't even guarantee a supply of the materials needed to replicate these supplies. They invited him to finish out the year at the Academy and then find another institution to finish out his biomedical degrees. He wrote Jim a comm message that night.

To: JTKirk(at)tarsuscolony(dot)highboard(dot)glx

From: GSKirk(at)starfleetcadets(dot)edu

Hey bro,

My immune system is officially as over enthusiastic as yours. Only instead of being allergic to everything under the sea and sky, it's targeted the beta cells in my pancreas. One of the few things we haven't developed or found a cure for yet that can keep you out of Starfleet, I manage to develop. Aren't we lucky huh? Hyposprays just became my new best friend and life support system. At least until the doc's determine that I'm ready to move to an insulin pod system.

I hope you are doing well and learning lots.

Love, your brother, Sam

Easter Sunday, Jim thought, a day of celebration, how ironic that Kodos would pick this day to acknowledge the existence of the fungus that was systematically killing off all the plants on Tarsus IV and that Starfleet wouldn't be able to get there in time for everyone to survive at the current population level with the current supply of emergency rations.

_"The revolution is successful. But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV."_

Eugenics as the answer, Jim's ASS. Just read all about Hitler and WWII to see how well that works.

Jim never got the message from his brother, he was too busy surviving. But the lack of reply made Sam kick up enough of a fuss with the Starfleet brass at the Academy to get a ship to Tarsus pronto. No one wanted to run the risk of the public learning that the son of one of the biggest hero's in the Federation had died or come to harm for whatever reason because Starfleet couldn't be bothered to send a ship to check up on him.

October 16th would be a day that Sam remembered for a long time. Not only was it the day he was moved off of insulin therapy via multiple daily hypo's and onto insulin therapy via insulin pods, but also as the first day he got to see his brother since the discovery of the massacre that had occurred on Tarsus IV. In the months to come both Jim and himself would be rediscovering food in Berkley, California. Jim as he recovered from the starvation and famine on Tarsus that caused him to hoard food and ignore his allergies; and Sam as he learned what could cause his blood sugar to go out of whack and how to eat so as to reduce his chances of dangerous complications due to diabetes in his later years.

It wouldn't be until years later that Sam would realize that he hadn't needed to be in Starfleet to be just like his Dad, his Dad was always taking care of people, the only way he knew how. And Sam, Sam had been doing _that_ since he was four.


End file.
